Online tutoring app hits Android Market

"Live USA Tutoring" Android app facilitates tutoring

TutaPoint.com released Monday "Live USA Tutoring",its first tutoring mobile app for the Android platform.  "Live USA Tutoring" will give U.S. students access everywhere to their tutors and its learning platform. A desktop version has been on the market since 2007.

Ryan Duques, co-founder of TutaPoint.com told VatorNews  "it will allow students using a smartphone or tablet to directly connect, communicate and collaborate with a live tutor, much like in the desktop version, which is already used by thousands of U.S.-based students." When asked about the company decision to go mobile, Duques said,"with more and more students and tutors using their smartphones and tablets as a working tool, we just had to go mobile to respond to their needs."

Decision to develop the app on the Android platform  was based on TutaPoint's reliance on Flash. “We released on Android first because of our reliance on Flash, and some of the early development constraints," said Duquest."  The  iPhone/iPad version is planned in Q4 of this year.

According to figures from research group Gartner released in May 2011, Android's global market share rose to 36% during the quarter, compared to the Apple platform's 18.8%.

Major competitors in the online tutoring field are tutorvista.com, which is based in India and tutor.com. Tutor.com offers an iPhone app for online tutoring. There is no talk of an Android app at the moment. 

Tutor.com is a New York-based company backed by respected venture capital firms including Intel Capital and private investors.  

Pearson, the world's leading education company, acquired in January 2011, a majority stake in tutorvista.com at an equity valuation of $213 MM.

TutaPoint.com is self-funded.

TutaPoint.com, based in Manhattan, was founded in 2007 by Ryan Duques and Michael Callaghan; it provides U.S.-based tutoring in math, science, language arts, and world languages and also publishes a variety of supplemental textbooks, eBooks and math support videos.